The First Symphony is a perky, three-movement piece that contemporary critics described as Stravinsky mixed with Puccini, but to modern ears it sounds like neither. It is indeed cast clearly in a neo-classical mode, and there's not a shred of obvious Scandinavian sound--amazing for the date of composition (1925), when Nielsen's influence was strongest in Danish music. It's not perfect--the outer movements could be better sustained--but the sheer charm of the work's ideas carries the day. The performances in this first volume of a projected series of Riisager's symphonic works are first-rate, and so is the engineering. Bo Holten and his players clearly relish the music's color and energy, and I can only welcome this release with great enthusiasm and high hopes for the series as a whole.

The real significance of this release, though, lies in the premiere recording of the Symphony in its original, three-movement form. It's easy to understand why Irgens-Jensen had his doubts. The first two movements follow a logical progression from anxiety to a triumph similar in tone to the climax of the Passacaglia. The finale is a sometimes spooky, sometimes sardonic march of markedly Mahlerian character, and Irgens-Jensen might have felt that the quiet, equivocal ending reflected too much of the troubled times (1942) in which it was composed.

That said, the third movement strikes me as welcome, and emotionally necessary. The use of thematic recall adds structural balance to the work that it otherwise lacks, and the fact that the ending is not conventionally triumphant, in this day and age is not a mark against it. Most significantly, the movement contains some really powerful and evocative music, and it would be a terrible pity to sacrifice anything by a composer of this ability, one who wrote so few large-scale orchestral works. The performance is as fine as we have any right to expect, and the sonics are both rich and vivid. Might we look forward to a badly needed new version of the Partita Sinfonica from these same forces?

The four Shostakovich quartets offered here constitute the heart of the cycle, culminating in the incredibly popular (amazing because musically it's very sad) Eighth Quartet. In this latter work, the Pacifica Quartet finds a perfect balance between technical polish and raw intensity, nowhere more so than in the ferocious second movement. In Quartet No. 5, with its complex outer movements, the players pace the music with an unerring feeling for tension and relaxation. Even the slender Seventh, Shostakovich's shortest quartet, has an unusual measure of cogency and expressive depth.

Miaskovsky's Thirteenth Quartet, his last, is a splendid work: conservative to be sure, but so beautifully written. The scherzo, marked "Presto fantastico", displays a vast quantity of color and texture, but then the entire work belies the notion that the quartet medium tends toward the monochrome. The thematic invention is also surprisingly arresting for this composer; some of the symphonies seem bland in comparison. Once again, it would be difficult to imagine a finer performance, and the engineering allows the players' attractive sonority and well-balanced ensemble work to speak with total naturalness. A great start to a very promising series.

The four sonatas on this disc have been arranged around the splendid work in C minor, one of Haydn's greatest and most important keyboard pieces. No. 29 in E-flat major also is a grand work, with a profoundly moving central slow movement, while the two sonatas on the other side of No. 33 are lighter in character, but no less rich in invention. The entire sequence makes an ideal program for continuous listening, and Chandos' sonics are terrific. Another great release in a standard-setting series.